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Ashes to Ashes: A Novel (Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska) Mass Market Paperback – June 27, 2000
“[Tami Hoag] demonstrates just why she has become one of the hottest names in the suspense game. Bottom line: Leaves competition in the dust.”—People
He performs his profane ceremony in a wooded Minneapolis park, anointing his victims, then setting the bodies ablaze. He has already claimed three lives, and he won’t stop there. Only this time there is a witness. But she isn’t talking.
Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still. Her superiors are interested only because the latest victim may be the daughter of Peter Bondurant, an enigmatic billionaire. When Peter pulls strings, Special Agent John Quinn gets assigned to the case. But the FBI’s ace profiler of serial killers is the last person Kate wants to work with, not with their troubled history. Now she faces the most difficult role of her career—and her life. For she’s the only woman who has what it takes to stop the killer . . . and the one woman he wants next.
“You’ll want to lock the doors while you’re reading.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“An up-all-night read.”—The Detroit News
- Print length576 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBantam
- Publication dateJune 27, 2000
- Dimensions4.12 x 1.26 x 6.82 inches
- ISBN-100553579606
- ISBN-13978-0553579604
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"[Tami Hoag] demonstrates just why she has become one of the hottest names in the suspense game....Bottom line: Leaves competition in the dust."—People
"[A] detail-packed thriller...The Silence of the Lambscomes to mind more than once."—Entertainment Weekly
"Tami Hoag is the queen of the crime story."—New York Post
"You'll want to lock the doors while you're reading."—Star Tribune, Minneapolis
"An up-all-night read."—Detroit News
From the Inside Flap
Enter Kate Conlan, former FBI agent turned victim/witness advocate. Not even she can tell if the reluctant witness is a potential victim or something more troubling still. Her superiors are interested only because the latest victim may be the daughter of Peter Bondurant, an enigmatic billionaire. When he pulls strings, Special Agent John Quinn gets assigned to the case. But the FBI's ace profiler of serial killers is the last person Kate wants to work with, not with their troubled history. Now she faces the most difficult role of her career--and her life. For she's the only woman who has what it takes to stop the killer...and the one woman he wants next.
In the darkness a match is struck. Not for heat, not for light...but to ignite the fire of a killer. He leaves nothing behind but ashes...and the ice-cold certainty that he will strike again. -->
From the Back Cover
"Without a doubt...one of the most intense suspense writers around."
--Chicago Tribune
"[Tami Hoag] demonstrates just why she has become one of the hottest names in the suspense game....Bottom line: Leaves competition in the dust."
--People
"[A] detail-packed thriller...The Silence of the Lambs comes to mind more than once."
--Entertainment Weekly
"Tami Hoag is the queen of the crime story."
--New York Post
"You'll want to lock the doors while you're reading."
--Star Tribune, Minneapolis
"An up-all-night read."
--The Detroit News
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
He lifts the body from the back of the Blazer like a roll of old carpet to be discarded. The soles of his boots scuff against the blacktop of the parking area, then fall nearly silent on the dead grass and hard ground. The night is balmy for November in Minneapolis. A swirling wind tosses fallen leaves. The bare branches of the trees rattle together like bags of bones.
He knows he falls into the last category of killers. He has spent many hours, days, months, years studying his compulsion and its point of origin. He knows what he is, and he embraces that truth. He has never known guilt or remorse. He believes conscience, rules, laws, serve the individual no practical purpose, and only limit human possibilities.
"Man enters into the ethical world through fear and not through love."
--Paul Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil.
His True Self adheres only to his own code: domination, manipulation, control.
A broken shard of moon glares down on the scene, its light faint beneath the web of limbs. He arranges the body to his satisfaction and traces two intersecting X's over the left upper chest. With a sense of ceremony, he pours the accelerant. Anointing the dead. Symbolism of evil. His True Self embraces the concept of evil as power. Fuel for the internal fire.
"Ashes to ashes."
The sounds are ordered and specific, magnified by his excitement. The scrape of the match against the friction strip, the pop as it bursts with flame, the whoosh of the fire as it comes alive and consumes. As the fire burns, his memory replays the earlier sounds of pain and fear. He recalls the tremor in her voice as she pleaded for her life, the unique pitch and quality of each cry as he tortured her. The exquisite music of life and death.
For one fine moment he allows himself to admire the drama of the tableau. He allows himself to feel the heat of the flames caress his face like tongues of desire. He closes his eyes and listens to the sizzle and hiss, breathes deep the smell of roasting flesh.
Elated, excited, aroused, he takes his erection out of his pants and strokes himself hard. He brings himself nearly to climax, but is careful not to ejaculate. Save it for later, when he can celebrate fully.
His goal is in sight. He has a plan, meticulously thought out, to be executed with perfection. His name will live in infamy with all the great ones--Bundy, Kemper, the Boston Strangler, the Green River Killer. The press here has already given him a name: the Cremator.
It makes him smile. It makes him proud. He lights another match and holds it just in front of him, studying the flame, loving the sinuous, sensuous undulation of it. He brings it closer to his face, opens his mouth, and eats it.
Then he turns and walks away. Already thinking of next time.
MURDER.
The sight burned its impression into the depths of her memory, into the backs of her eyeballs so that she could see it when she blinked against the tears. The body twisting in slow agony against its horrible fate. Orange flame a backdrop for the nightmare image.
Burning.
She ran, her lungs burning, her legs burning, her eyes burning, her throat burning. In one abstract corner of her mind, she was the corpse. Maybe this was what death was like. Maybe it was her body roasting, and this consciousness was her soul trying to escape the fires of hell. She had been told repeatedly that was where she would end up.
In the near distance she could hear a siren and see the weird flash of blue and red lights against the night. She ran for the street, sobbing, stumbling. Her right knee hit the frozen ground, but she forced her feet to keep moving.
Run run run run run run--
"Freeze! Police!"
The cruiser still rocked at the curb. The door was open. The cop was on the boulevard, gun drawn and pointed straight at her.
"Help me!" The words rasped in her throat.
"Help me!" she gasped, tears blurring her vision.
Her legs buckled beneath the weight of her body and the weight of her fear and the weight of her heart that was pounding like some huge swollen thing in her chest.
The cop was beside her in an instant, holstering his weapon and dropping to his knees to help. Must be a rookie, she thought dimly. She knew fourteen-year-old kids with better street instincts. She could have gotten his weapon. If she'd had a knife, she could have raised herself up and stabbed him.
He pulled her up into a sitting position with a hand on either shoulder. Sirens wailed in the distance.
"What happened? Are you all right?" he demanded. He had a face like an angel.
"I saw him," she said, breathless, shaking, bile pushing up the back of her throat. "I was there. Oh--Jesus. Oh--shit. I saw him!"
"Saw who?"
"The Cremator."
Product details
- Publisher : Bantam; Reissue edition (June 27, 2000)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 576 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0553579606
- ISBN-13 : 978-0553579604
- Item Weight : 10.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.12 x 1.26 x 6.82 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,244,601 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #17,013 in Police Procedurals (Books)
- #39,478 in Romantic Suspense (Books)
- #50,296 in Suspense Thrillers
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jenny Han is the New York Times bestselling author of The Summer I Turned Pretty series; Shug; the Burn for Burn trilogy, cowritten with Siobhan Vivian; and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and P.S. I Still Love You. She is also the author of the chapter book Clara Lee and The Apple Pie Dream. A former children’s bookseller, she earned her MFA in creative writing at the New School. Visit her at DearJennyHan.com.
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My Review 3.5*** Stars Rounded down
This police procedural was originally published March 2, 1999, and it was the debut novel that launched the author’s book series featuring Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska. I recently finished reading her OAK KNOLL trilogy with books released 2009, 2010, and 2011 respectively. The OAK KNOLL series was distinguished by the author’s decision to set the stories in mid-‘80s to 1990. I loved the fictional characters who populated the town of Oak Knoll, California, and enjoyed the nostalgic backdrop of the golden era of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit and the Days of the Nine (legends in the field of profiling serial killers). I was no stranger to the works of Tami Hoag, but reading DEEPER THAN THE DEAD reminded me how much I enjoyed her novels in the past. My tastes in reading have gravitated to the genre of crime fiction and its sub-genres of police procedurals, serial killer thrillers, and psychological suspense. Hoag transitioned to the field of crime fiction while remaining true to her romance roots. Somewhat to my surprise I found that the romantic angle in DEEPER THAN THE DEAD only strengthened the overall storyline which was at its heart a stellar police procedural and serial killer thriller.
I was drawn to Hoag’s Kovac & Liska book series because the book descriptions sounded very much like my go-to crime suspense fare. The debut novel I just finished (ASHES TO ASHES) pre-dates the Oak Knoll books by a decade. This is at once interesting and somewhat novel because there are many scenes in the book that really “date” the storyline, and much like the Oak Knoll series, the reader gleans just how far that forensic science has advanced in the past couple of decades. It also didn’t escape me that the author returned to writing novels that featured Kovac & Liska after completing the Oak Knoll books.
ASHES TO ASHES was in many ways a disappointment. The characters of homicide detectives Sam Kovac and Nikki Liska are introduced but this interesting investigative team of cops do not take center stage. The main protagonist is Kate Conlan, a former FBI agent from the Behavioral Sciences unit who reinvented herself and her career after a tragic loss, a failed marriage, and an ill-fated romantic fling. She is an experienced and dedicated victim/witness advocate when our story unfolds. The primary male character is John Quinn, FBI Profiler extraordinaire, who is called out to investigate a trilogy of murders which are presumed to be the work of one serial killer. This reunites a pair of star-crossed lovers who have had no contact with one another for five years, namely Kate and Quinn. The author did a great job with fully realizing the peripheral characters around the dynamic duo, namely the detective squad, political figures, prosecutors, and persons of influence. Hoag uses first person POV for segments that relate to our serial murderer.
The author’s talent for writing snappy, colorful and sometimes downright hilarious dialogue doesn’t fail her in this one. I found myself laughing out loud more than once or twice. I really liked the unapologetic, morally righteous, heroic, and colorful Kovac. The much younger Nikki Liska is a laugh a minute but take-no-prisoners compactly packaged dynamo. As a team, I can hardly wait for the second installment of the book series. The main character of Kate Conlan was not particularly sympathetic at times in the story line as it progressed. She was still weighed down by a ton of emotional baggage and her life preceding the pivotal point of Quinn re-entering her life felt like it was stunted. Kate was quick to anger and came across to me as being self-absorbed and in survival mode. She DID have a cat, though, and her dedication to Thor won her some points with me. Similarly, the lead man John Quinn was intriguing when he was actively engaged with the detective squad or persons of interest, witnesses, etc. His introspection when he was alone and agonizing with his gnawing stomach ulcer gave me heartburn. I believe that the romantic angle in this outing ostensibly to introduce Kovac and Liska was just over the top melodramatic. In my opinion, it detracted from this crime thriller quite a bit. In particular the love scenes were realistically absurd, and have all of the elements of a romantic fairy tale.
The book was too long and could have benefitted from some editing. I realized that the momentum had slowed to a crawl around the 60% mark and it struck me that I had become disengaged enough to nit pick the small stuff. One example was the thread about Walsh, the local FBI Liaison and his cigarette smoking, unhealthy appearance. The man was coughing a lung up throughout the book until he finally dropped dead. It was a plot device to enhance the chills and excitement of the singular moment when the decapitated head of victim number three was discovered.
Finally, I was a little fatigued by the end of the book but was dissatisfied with how Kate acquitted herself when she faced adversity. The reader necessarily needs to view her actions and inactions through the lens of what would a former FBI Agent and profiler do. Kate didn’t even have an affinity for home security measures or having easy access to a phone. The big reveal which involved the identity of The Cremator AKA “Smokey Joe” felt like It was way too complex on the one hand, but also plain dissatisfying as to the identity of the villain. This was a whodunit of course with quite a deep pool of suspects. I was surprised by the plot twist at the end but conversely didn’t “like” the individual selected by the author to be “the big bad” here. I guess I said that already.
This horrific killer is called the "Creamator" and when you read you will find out why. The interplay between the FBI profiler and Kate brings a nice bit of romance, and the way Kate deals with this vulnerable witness who is not the easiest girl to get close too is touching. The serial killer is someone who everyone on the case feels is someone they may know, someone familiar, or at least one gets that feeling. I don't want to give away to much about the book, but just to say if you are looking for a great book that is one of those that is hard to put down, this is your book. I have fallen asleep many nights, book in hand as I just can't seem to put it down. Ms. Hoag has an easy reading style, she has just enough characters to make it interesting, but not so many that you have to keep going back and forth to figure out who they are. If you are a true mystery buff and enjoy seeing things from the FBI and the laws point of view along with the killers thought throughout the this book is one of the best I have read in years. I have read most of Tami Hoags book and I think this is my favorite so far. I was so excited to see "Dust to Dust" coming out August 1st will have some of the same characters, as I am not ready to let them go yet. Thank you Tami for making reading such a great treat again. I have always loved to read, but your books are the best!